Inside the tiny NY county with one of the nation's highest vaccination rates

An impressive 65% of people in Hamilton County, New York, are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 36% of Americans nationally.

New York's Hamilton County is rural, remote and Republican. It also has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country. In general, vaccine hesitancy is estimated to be higher in rural areas, according to an ABC News analysis of county-level data. Counties with high estimated hesitancy also tend to be younger, poorer and more likely to have been won by former President Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election. Hamilton defies several of those trends. The county is "very, very rural," according to Bill Farber, the county's board chairman, with a year-round population of fewer than 5,000 residents nestled among the mountains and lakes of New York's Adirondack Park. It's isolated, with infrastructure and technology challenges, including spotty broadband and cell service. There's no hospital nor pharmacy in the county. During a pandemic that's been heavily politicized, it leans Republican, with 68% of residents voting for Trump in the 2020 election. And yet an impressive 65% of people in the county are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 36% of Americans nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.